I wasn’t aware that Mirai was thinking of coming back for nationals, and in all honesty my feeling are a little mixed about it. It’ll be good to see her skate again and I was going to miss going to miss her this season, but honestly, it always worries me when skaters decide to do half seasons.
I feel like it would be better if she took a whole season off, nationals is such a high stakes competition to come back to after being off for so long. The beauty of starting the season off with a challenger is that you have the ability to make some mistakes without long term consequences. Your happy for a skater when they do well at a challenger, but it’s also not the end of the world if they don’t, they have more chances to prove yourself.
At nationals you have one chance, and after not competing all season, Mirai would have to be amazing to go to worlds. But she probably won’t be because it’d be her first commotion back. I just can’t see this being a smart move.